Tensions Run High After Sunni Killings in Beirut

BEIRUT - The killings of two pro-government Sunni Muslims has raised tensions
across Lebanon. Rival political leaders have called for calm amidst fear that
the killings could spark civil strife.

The Lebanese police found the bodies Thursday of a pro-government supporter
and a 12-year-old boy abducted earlier this week. The abduction was believed
to be in retaliation for the killing earlier this year of a Shi'ite Muslim opposition
activist.

The bodies of 25-year-old Ziad Qabalan and 12-year-old Ziad Ghandour were
found 40km south of Beirut in a field north of the port city of Sidon.
Ghandour's father and Qabalan are members of the Progressive Socialist party
of pro-government Druze leader Walid Jumblatt.

The two had been kidnapped Monday, inflaming the already high sectarian tensions
in this small country of four million people with 18 religions. Tensions have
been running particularly high between Shi'ite and Sunni Muslims.

Lebanese media reported that the two were kidnapped by members of the Shi'ite Shamas clan who had vowed to avenge the killing of a member in clashes
at the Beirut university campus in January. The clan, however, condemned
the kidnapping in a statement Wednesday, and distanced itself from the abduction.

Lebanese President Emile Lahoud said the killing was carried out after conspirators
and outside powers failed to drive his country into internal confrontations.

The recent killing is the same as what happened in 1975, Lahoud told IPS at
the presidential palace in Beirut. They want civil war here, but we won't allow
it.

The 1975 incident the president referred to occurred Apr. 13 of that year when
unidentified gunmen fired on a church in the Christian east Beirut suburb Ain
el-Rummaneh, killing four people, including two Maronite Phalangists. The Phalange
is a large Christian militia.

Hours later, Phalangists killed 27 Palestinian civilians in a bus in the
same suburb.

That was the trigger for the infamous 15-year Lebanese civil war, which
left an estimated 100,000 dead, as many seriously injured, and nearly a million
displaced from their homes.

When asked who they were who want a Lebanese civil war, Lahoud told IPS "it's
always foreign interventions trying to create strife in Lebanon, and it's always
the Lebanese who suffer. But I'm proud that the leaders of all groups here are
united in urging calm and condemning the killing."

Lahoud's office issued a statement urging Lebanese people to be alert to
conspiracies, and to stop anyone trying to play dirty. Past experience has shown
that all confrontations followed provoking incidents, the statement said.

Lahoud requested that firm security measures be taken to prevent any repercussions
of this deplorable incident. As a result, all universities in Beirut were closed
Friday, and the Lebanese army deployed in mixed neighborhoods. Extra security
checkpoints were set up throughout the city.

Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, who described the incident as a terrorist act,
also appealed for calm. The powerful Shi'ite group Hezbollah led by Hassan Nasrallah
also condemned the killings.

Many Lebanese people sounded united in wanting the situation to be defused
in order to avoid any escalation.

With Nasrallah and Jumblatt calling for calm, this has defused the tension
a good deal, Hamzah Tahan, a taxi driver in Beirut told IPS. But before
they called for calm, we were all afraid.

Tahan said he believed these were revenge killings, but carried out by
simple thieves.

Many blame the current U.S.-backed government of Siniora and his allies like
Saad Hariri and Walid Jumblatt for creating a difficult situation.

Outside forces helped create the current political tensions which may have
led to these killings, 32-year-old English language teacher Raed el-Amine told
IPS. The pro-government groups are more responsible for this because they've
focused more on disunity by playing the sectarian game.

Sporadic violence between the mainly Sunni, Druze and Christian ruling coalition
and the mainly Shi'ite and Christian opposition has killed at least eight people
since the opposition launched a peaceful street campaign last year to topple
the government. Each incident has raised the tensions higher, as did the
events that had led to Lebanon's civil war.

Originally from Anchorage, Alaska, Dahr Jamail writes about the
effects of the US occupation on the people of Iraq, since the mainstream
media in the US has in large part, he believes, failed to do so.

Dahr has spent a total of 5 months in occupied Iraq, and plans
on returning in October to continue reporting on the occupation.
One of only a few independent reporters in Iraq, Dahr will be using
the DahrJamailIraq.com
website and mailing list to disseminate his dispatches and will
continue as special correspondent for Flashpoints Radio.

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